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Over the last 18 months Greece has become the epicentre of
consecutive crises, not only economic and political, but also of image and
belonging. Statistics about rising unemployment, falling GDP, the mass exodus
of young people, refugee and migrant flows and detentions do not fully capture
contemporary realities of ordinary Greeks. The psychological pressures exerted
by government, elite politicians and mainstream media domestically and abroad is
overwhelming, all competing to dictate the urgency of austerity measures.

These very crises have produced different waves and
scales of mobilizations, channelled by newly formed grass-roots structures and
assemblies, solidarity and cooperative initiatives, nurturing a civic culture
that strives for social change and symbolic recognition. I have previously argued how this civic culture diverts from mainstream civil
society in Greece and have highlighted, along
with others, the
existing tensionsbetween
state power and non-partisan political movements. It is important to focus on the ways in which evolving
communication practices on social media have shaped the nature and character of
the solidarity and cooperative initiatives in the last few years.

Mediated through alternative and ‘small media’, and
occasionally by random tactical communication channels, these sites have
offered forms of alternative reporting and self-organisation. I use the
particular urban character of the constellations defined as anti-austerity and
cooperative solidarity movements with an evolving scope and stance of alternative and activist
media in Greece. I
suggest a two-phase periodization to correlate the historical context and
changing priorities of urban mobilizations. The first period ushered a wave of
mass mobilisations and protest, resulting in the development of a number of
initiatives contesting the official discourse; a second period began once a government
of the Left took power.

The repercussions of neoliberal urbanization, the broader forces of austerity and the corrosion of
democratic processes experienced in Greece between 2011 and mid-2014
ushered a wave of mass mobilisations and protest events in large public spaces:
the squares movement. A relative
weakness of formal civil society actors meant that grievances provoked by
urbanisation once partly resolved by a system of patronage, philanthropy and
indirect representation, were left to fester around large urban centres, in
particular Athens.
The squares movement had a transformative effect, as it begun popularising the idea and practice
of self-organization and direct democracy, and allowed for some experimentation with social media activism. Furthermore, these movements nurtured a number of
creative initiatives, generating independent spaces for activists to channel
their concerns, often resulting in spontaneous forms of citizen mobilization.
Demonstrations took place in areas that have a tradition of political activism,
such as Exarcheia and Kypseli, but also in places where forces of
gentrification or austerity encouraged individuals to form cooperative and
alternative structures,neighbourhoods such as
Psiri, Plato Academy, Gazi and Neos Kosmos.

While some of these
initiatives started by responding to social needs within a specified field -
health, food, unemployment, labour rights and the rise of fascism, amongst many
others - they gradually extended their activities to other sectors, and gave
new meaning to processes of resistance. In most cases small scale, low cost
'micromedia' sites, such as mailing lists or Facebook groups, would be set up
by one person or a small group with a specific purpose; these varied from coordination
to the offer of hyperlocal knowledge and news. Eventually, through personal blogs but also through occasionally
random tactical communication channels, these sites began offering real
alternative reporting, generating modalities of resistance, provocation and
solidarity.

In other cases, the scope
of DIY activist media played a more confrontational role. As argued by Gigi
Argiropoulou, critical performance spaces played a fundamental role in confronting the politics
of gentrification and what I would call ‘creative clientilism’. For example,
the occupation of a disused theatre -Theatro
Embros – allowed the emergence of
countercultural groups and architect collectives in the gentrified area of
Psiri in central Athens.
These groups used both physical and social media spaces to satirise municipally
controlled participation schemes and posed
pressing questions around the potentially muddy politics of a ‘social event’
produced in a public space.

In other areas, such as the
deprived
neighbourhood of Plato
Academy, groups emerged from different power struggles within
municipal institutions. These organisations raised from several bottom-up initiatives, such as
cultural
and educational clubs, conducting some hyper-local
journalism and embarking upon some other social experiments, including cooperative economy
collectives to social pharmacies, soup kitchens, and refugee
support networks. All of these groups aimed at fostering relationships
of equality, contrary to the structures of charity and philanthropy which
preceded them.

After
researching some of these groups, it became clear that in order to make the
most of their efforts, it was important to collect, publicise and promote the
productive use of the accumulated know-how, as well as their material and
immaterial assets. Some of these resources are being made available on websites
or ended up circulating in social media. Most have stayed within the confines
of the groups who generate them. However, some solidarity media hubs have
created platforms and means to bring together such resources, enhancing the visibility of such initiatives both within and
outside Greece.

A number
of disenfranchised professional and citizen journalists set up solidarity media hubs during this first
period of dissent. Notable examples are the bilingual The Press
Project and, in a smaller scale,
platforms such as Diaologos
Media, OmniaTV, and more recently Athens
Live. These initiatives demonstrated
the lack of media representation in Greece to the outer world while
striving to achieve a wider reach with local audiences, whose main media diet until
then originated from privately owned television companies.

Omikron
Project was launched by Mehran Khalili, a British-Iranian
political communications specialist who lives in Athens as a promotional campaign. Alongside a
group of Greek journalists, designers, and film-makers he created short films
to counter the image of Greeks as lazy victims of the economic crisis and to
challenge stereotypes, questioning the ways the crisis is portrayed in the
international media. Furthermore, they documented the rise of the grassroots
groups in Greece
and begun producing an annual list and infographics. Enallaktikos started with a view to create an online economy that
promotes the use of alternative local currencies and emerged as another sources
of alternative media, brokering portals for micro-sites. The Solidarity for all Network, originally funded by Syriza, has documented
solidarity initiatives across Greece
and continues to provide networking tools for decentralized practices, as well
as set up a new agenda for collective action.

It would be hard to argue
that all these initiatives are ideologically cohesive. Nonetheless, they have all
have played a crucial role in enhancing the visibility and the coordination of
the solidarity movements in Greece,
locally and across Europe. At the same time, and
through repeated interactions of their members, some cross-fertilization has emerged
and key actors from different initiatives have shared their know-hows and developed
trust for one another. Trust
and know-how have become crucial
‘relational assets’
generated through intensive and intimate face-to-face interactions and through
direct digital communication and social media. These relational assets have
allowed previously unconnected activists to not only pull their particular
resources together, such as time, money, reputation and knowledge, towards
collective projects, but have also provided them with the practical skills to
deploy these resources to not only have serious reputational impact on
particular individuals but even the power to question their political
legitimacy.

After the 2015 Greece’s
turbulent fiscal odyssey, another chapter in the struggles to fight austerity
programmes emerged: the institutional forces of a newly elected government of
the Left, which attempted to shake up the power balance, creating a sense of hope
and solidarity across anti-austerity and resistance movements across
Europe. Unfortunately, the eventual
capitulation of the Syriza government and its submission to yet another imposed
structural adjustment programme resulted in fresh disillusion, culminating in
the ambiguous national referendum of July 2015.

After these events, some activists
transcended their digital spheres and began to engage in more direct forms of
popular participation, consolidating their support. The solidarity and engagement
practices which were slowly nurtured during the previous years resulted in a
more mature civic culture, which strived to build the capacities of ordinary
people to represent themselves in social and alternative media. Some of these
groups even began to assist refugees and demonstrated the vast psychological
resources available to the Greek people, even in times of political frustration.

While the affordances of
social media platforms have led to a considerable reduction in microsites and
hyperlocal blogs, other phenomena have emerged during the last few years,
shaping the nature of anti-austerity and solidarity media activism. Social media is largely accessed through smart
phones, the routes to media
activism lie in both ‘opportunity structures’ of civil and urban rights
movements or unconventional action repertoires, which emerge as more ‘open’
governance structures of Facebook groups.

As emergency appeals and
positive stories of ‘humanitarian achievements’ coincided with a growing need
for more resources, the multiplication of the activities of the solidarity
structures go beyond their initial field. In some cases, initiatives which at
first dealt with food shortages have now developed cooperative production in
order to meet their needs, creating alternative economies through radical labour
and hospitality structures. These structures have responded to the massive influx of refugees.

Due to the violent
resurfacing of new economic measures which have condemned Greece to eight
consecutive years of recession, and taking in consideration the refugee crisis,
a new sense of a ‘state of emergency’ , perhaps more far reaching than the state of bankruptocracy or debtocracy
previously experienced in the country, the fragility of the relationship
between the government, Europe and the social movements or indeed the
grassroots solidarity movement has probably become more intense.

Much of the recent coverage
in the mainstream press in Europe has
over-emphasized the idea of populism as the driving force behind the
anti-austerity projects and associated media activism. By focusing on
anti-austerity discourse in mere economic terms, such coverage undermines the
legitimacy of a new breed of political culture. An aura of political creativity,
and a sense of ‘media justice’ have emerged in Greece. Activists and ordinary
people turn a street, a kitchen, a
website and social media not just into another ‘space of appearances’, but into
new heterotopic and counter-sites for parody, satire, insider knowledge,
distributed hospitality and affective solidarity. These sites dispersed through
social media, are evocative of what Roger Silverstone argued almost ten years ago: hospitality is ‘a
precondition for the effective emergence of the mediapolis, as a space for
connection and compassion (…) a precondition for “media justice”’.

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